Ves Larkinson lives in a universe where mechs rule the battlefield. Mechs and mech pilots are glorified, both in battle and out of it.
As a Larkinson, he is expected to join the family in a long line of historied mech pilots. Alas, since mechs are piloted using a neural relay, some genes affect how good a pilot can be, and Ves simply got one of the worst kind of connection with neural relay.
Disbarred from his family's heritage from a fluke of genetics, he decided to become a mech designer instead, but double alas, he simply isn't good enough...
What can a young man do?
Get a Mech Designing System from his exiled father, of course.
Now, that was the opening premise of the story, and while it seemed cliched, it was plenty interesting at start. But unfortunately, Exlor delivered a different story than what is expected.
The tag 'Space Opera' is probably the important cue here, because the writing suggested that Exlor wanted to have a gritty kind of universe, where the main character is not the focal point which the suns and stars orbit around. The universe is large, and Ves inhabited a small portion at the rim of the galaxy, where tech level is plenty low that he thought the System might be some manner of quantum-like tech from the inner regions of the galaxy, where technology is more akin to wizardry.
There are politics and war between human polities of the Komodo Star System where Ves lives. There are business and politics among the controlling factions in the Bright Republic, the human polity that Ver is a national of. There are competition and politics between famed mech designers. There are jockeying and drama among the Larkinson family. There are...
You get the picture, right? There are a LOT of things happening, so the story does not just revolve around the poor boy and his Mech Designing System.
In fact, compared to standard Systems where one climb a strict hierarchy, here Ves has to spread himself between making a name as a mech designer, making a mech design that is good, getting more skills to make a better mech design, making his mech studio renowned and profitable, making a mech design that fits the requested niche, winning design contests, making connection in the mech production and market world, making business decisions, escaping spies, aliens, mutants, mercs, and armies...
Wait, what has the last one got to do with Mech Design, you say? Well, gritty setting and lots of politics meant that being reputable makes one interesting to others. Ves becomes a resource to be taken over or to be destroyed so that others might not benefit from him.
So again, there are LOTS of things happening, and mech design and the System simply fall to the wayside.
I wouldn't quite say that it was a bait-and-switch tactic, but expectations have been broken that there were quite a large number of bad reviews overall.
Did you like the basic slapdash big-arsed VR mech design from the beginning and the story of the VR pilot who played it? Well, there's not a whole lot of them.
It is not like the delivered storyline is not possibly interesting, but the problem is, Exlor is not at the stage that he could deliver such plotline with his current level of writing.
Later on, when X-Factor, Spirituality, and Resonance start to come into focus -which isn't bad, I just think it ala Newtype from Gundam instead of thinking them as space cultivation- Ves started to gain insights on his mech design philosophy... But the way he gained insights is kind of absurd and not very well expressed. For example, Event A happened, Ves does action B, bemoaned of C; after event passed, several scenes later, when Ves needed to do something, it was recapped that during event A happened Ves learned to do D, E, and F, and he integrated them into his design philosophy!
Wait! Didn't he only think of B and C while A happened!? Where did D, E, and F come from!? And D is just the thing he needed for this design he is currently facing!
Argh.
The ideas are good, execution needed alot of polish. Plot coherence and scene flow are odd.
